Alexander's Embedded Techwire

Microsoft just announced that Windows 7 will be in the shops end of October. Looking forward to it!

The Release Candidate version already runs more than fine on my PC.

 

Alexander

I am sitting at the gat at Munich Airport while I am writing this. An exiting week of news, technologies, meeting friends as well as new people lies before me. If it happens to be te case that You will be in LA, as well, mae sure You will drop by my session "Using PowerShell on Windows Embedded Standard". It will change Your life! (Well, Alexander modest as always).

Looking forward to be there.......

 

 

Alexander

I am writing this entry directly from Thomas Hemmer's session on IE 8 from the NIK Windows 7 inside event in Nuremberg.

Just delivered my own Windows Deployment talk.

Over 100 people, great content with speakers from Microsoft and partners. Fun to be here.

Get the slides at: www.nik-nbg.de

 

Alexander

It is one of the re-curring things in my Windows CE trainings.

Every time participants export an emulator image together with the SDK this works fine, but the emulator will not boot when the SDK is installed on an application developers machine.

The reson for this is that often KITL is included for debugging puposes when creating the image. Unfortunately this transport is not used by Visual Studio as its debugging transport layer. Visual Studio uses DMA and it seems that both technologies not really work well together (there only can be one, aka Highlander syndrom ).

Therefore, if You want to create an SDK remove KITL from the image configuration and You or respectively the application developer using the SDK will be fine.

 

Alexander

Yes, this is bad and it happens when all devices have the SCCM client included in the image. Meaning that it was cloned together with the image onto the target device. The device ID normally is generated during setup of the client.

Here is a snippet from the SCCM device manager documentation that helps you out:

 

Alternative unique device ID functionality

All currently available consumer Pocket PC devices support a unique hardware ID that the Device Management Agent uses as the SMS unique identifier, and the device management functionality works as designed.

Certain industrial devices do not report a unique device ID, so multiple devices share the SMS unique identifier, rendering the devices individually unmanageable by SMS. The result is that only a single device discovery data record (DDR) appears in the SMS Administrator console, even though multiple devices are successfully communicating with the SMS device management point.

WORKAROUND: Use alternative Device Client registry settings to change DeviceID behavior. To do this, create a registry script or use other means to change two registry keys on the device as follows:

Create this registry value: HKLM\Comm\ApplicationDownload\SimDeviceID with a type DWORD.

Set the value to one of the following (values 1-3 change the behavior of the Device Client Agent):

Value 0 : Default hardware ID functionality
Value 1 : Generate an ID based on a random numbers.
Value 2 : Generate ID from MAC address, if this fails return ID "NO_MAC_ADDR_DEVICE"
Value 3 : Generate ID from MAC address, if this fails generate an ID based on random numbers.

Set this value as a blank string to trigger the Device Client Agent to reset the DeviceID: HKLM\Comm\ApplicationDownload\DeviceID

These steps can be carried our prior to device installation, or subsequent to Device Client Agent installation, even when the Agent is running. If the Agent is running, then the next HTTP request to the device management point will generate a new device ID. The Device Client Agent will set the new device in the ‘DeviceID’ registry value, and not change this value again.

Caution Use of options 2 or 3, blanking of the device ID and subsequent reset of the device might result in the Device Client Agent being unable to acquire a MAC address because device networking components are still initializing. It is recommended that options 2 or 3 are not used in a reset scenario.

 

 

Alexander

 

 

I have done two new Webcasts for MSDN in Germany about Windows EmbeddedStandard 2009 and Device Profile Web Services on .NET MF devices.

Check them out at: http://www.microsoft.com/germany/msdn/webcasts/finder/default.mspx?g=status&o=&s=&presenter=Alexander+Wechsler&webcasttyp=&level=&locale=&technology=&q=

 

Language is German!

 

Alexander

Did You already see? Microsoft is planning to open stores:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-12CVPRetailStoresPR.mspx

I do hope that this will be a worldwide effort, because I would like to have such a store over here in Munich.

BTW. there already was a Microsoft shop here in earlier days, about 15 years ago.  

 

Alexander

A great example that Microsoft is listening quite well to customer input:

 

Alexander

In an industrial automation project we had Windows CE 5.0 devices managed via SCCM.

The problem was, that any time we installed a software distribution package via SCC the state got lost after a while and SCCM reapplied already installed packages to the devices.

As quite common for industrial automation controllers the Windows CE image was loaded from a CF card into RAM during boot. 

It turned out that this is the reason for trouble.

After loading the NK.bin image a file system is created in RAM. This file system is used by the SCCM device management client to store the installation state of the SW packages in a file called \windows\dms-inv.dat. This file, of course, gets lost when systems are bootet, because the RAM is cleared doing this. 

Unfortunately the device management client is not flexible enough to be installed onto the CF and therefore we had to find a workaround.

Each SCCM SW package now saves the dms-inv.dat file to the CF card after an installation. This file is copied back at each OS boot into the \windows folder via a Autoexec.cmd batch file.

This works but is not a "great" solution to be proud of.

It would be much better to store the installation state under a key in the persistent registry, which resides on the CF card in any case.

Maybe a good idea for the next CE version? I'll try to ask the guys in Redmond.

 

Alexander

It is always hard to look into the crystal ball, but I will try to have something to come back to end of the year.

So here are five predictions for 2009:

 

I am currently running Windows 7 Beta on my Dell Mini 9 Netbook. I do not have all the drivers working, yet. Afew devices such as WLAN are still a bit stubborn,but the rest looks great.

I have the impression that the system even runs faster than with XP Home and even offers the aero UI effects.

For me a clear sign that there has been a hughe performance leap compared to VISTA.

I am looking forward to have the new Embedded OS succeding Windows Embedded Standard based on this platform!

 

Alexander

 

to all readers of this blog.

It is great fun that You are spending time and thoughts with me.

 

All the best

Alexander

there is help! All sessions are available now.

You can find mine on WES here: http://www.microsoft.com/germany/msdn/events/archiv/technicalsummit08/library.aspx?id=msdn_de_30110

But there is more interesting stuff for example Frank Prengels session on Silverlight Mobile:

 

Have fun!

Alexander

I was speaking at the Technical Summit 2008 in Berlin on Windows Embedded Standard, just two weeks ago and was washed away by a lot of questions and interest into the newest release of Microsoft componentized operating system. This is quite remarkable, because the Technical Summit is not an embedded conference, at all!

For me, it is a clear sign that people are beginning to discover the oppotunities available in the connected device market. Embedded products are on the brink to leave their niche and therefore interesting times ly ahead of embedded devlopers.

To put it in a nutshell, great conference, great people!

 

By the way Berlin, is a great place for events and I am looking forward to have TechED EMEA in this remarkable city next year.

Well, this is quite a statement by somebody living in Bavaria, or?

 

Alexander

TechEd EMEA 2008 is closing down slowly. What an amazing week.

It was great fun to see the Windows Embedded topics first time beneath big names such as Sharepoint in the conference Agenda!

There was also time to mix and mingle with people from all over the world, who (well some of them) did even make it to my sessions.

Here is proof in the blog of the ElektroBit guys. I had great fun presenting to an energized and inspired crowd.

 

In addition, I had very good talks with the Microsoft collegues from Redmond, France, UK, Spain, Switzerland, Germany,... (somehow lost track on this) and was amazed to see a Miele washing machine on stage for the first time ever in a developers conference!
Frank Prengel (Microsoft) and Stefan Hoppe (Beckhoff) did an outstanding job to present the future of communication between connected devices: Device Profile Web Services (DPWS).

We also had a great Windows Embedded Community event right next to the TechED venue on Tuesday evening. Damian Barnet and Harald Kraschina (ElektroBit) were so kind to post some photos.

 

If You have missed TechEd EMEA, well, there is a chance to catch up, at least a little bit, next week at the German Technical Summit 2008 in Berlin. There will be the full force of the German DPE gang joined by Frank Prengel as well as my humble self.

While the guys show You the latest and greatest of all Microsoft technology, I am having a session on the new and exciting stuff in the Windows Embedded Standard release.

 

This is something that hardly can be missed. :-)

 

 

See You in Berlin next week!

 

Alexander